1. Introduction
With rapid development of globalization, China’s marine economic development plays an increasingly important role in the landscape of global economy, which has attracted more and more attention of foreign people. However, there are few English versions of Chinese marine economic materials available to foreign readers for reference. The Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for the Development of China’s National Marine Economy (hereinafter referred to as “the Plan”) (https://www.yidaiyilu.gov.cn/zchj/jggg/18111.htm), issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Oceanic Administration, introduces the current situation and development strategies of China’s marine economy. The source text is the first four texts extracted from the Plan, which is the very part selected as the object of translation by the current author of this report. The translation will be favorable for foreign readers to have a general understanding of China’s marine economic development, hence it plays an important role in disseminating ocean knowledge to foreign readers as well as further promoting the communication and cooperation of international marine economy.
The purpose of the task can be summarized into the following three aspects: firstly, from the perspective of international economic and cultural exchange, it aims to introduce the extensive and profound China’s marine knowledge to western readers, enhance cultural exchange between China and the outside world and promote the further development of China’s marine economy. Secondly, this translation task wants to offer a reliable reference for foreign investors, with the purpose of attracting new driving force for China’s marine economy. And lastly, it is expected that the practice of this translation task will be able to improve the current author’s translation skills in dealing with this text type and even other types as well.
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2. Task Description
2.1 Introduction to source text
As one contributor of national economy, the ocean is an important strategic space for China’s economic and social development. With economy as the traction, the Thirteenth Five-Year plan for marine economic development coordinates all work in economic layout, structural adjustment, scientific and technological innovation, ecological civilization, cooperation and development and system reform. And it points out the direction for the full implementation of the strategic task of building a marine power.
The source text of this translation task consists of the first four parts with 1,2000 Chinese characters excerpted from the Plan. The first part, which is the upgrading of the layout for marine economic development, introduces the marine economic circles in the north, east and south and the development and production of islands. The second part provides the details about how to promote the upgrading of marine industry in aspects of traditional marine industries, new marine industries, marine service industries and the development of agglomeration tendencies. The third part demonstrates the innovation in marine economy with the details of major scientific and technological innovation, the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, pilot marine economic development and innovation of system and mechanism for talents. The last part is the construction of marine ecological cultivation in aspects of the protection of marine ecology, overall management of marine environment, usage of marine resources in a rational way, low-carbon development of marine industries and improvement of capability of disaster prevention and mitigation.
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2.2 Target readers
The target readers of the translation task are chiefly foreign readers who are interested in China’s economy, especially its marine economy. On the one hand, the translation task is to fully spread Chinese marine culture and spirit to those who are interested in China’s marine economy; on the other hand, it aims to provide reference for investors or scholars who are engaged in research on China’s and international marine economy.
The preparation of translation will guarantee not only the quality of the translation task but also the smooth writing process of the report. This part will give more details in analysis of the language features of source text and preparation of references and parallel texts.
The Thirteenth Five-Year plan for marine economic development is typically polity-oriented text. In the translation of such political texts, “we must be strict with the standards of loyalty, because the political texts involve the principles and policies of the state” (Cheng Zhenqiu 2003: 18), thus the requirements for the accuracy and fidelity of translation are extremely high.
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3. Process Description .................................. 3
3.1 Preparation of translation ......................................... 3
3.1.1 Analysis of the language features of source text ........................... 3
3.1.2 Preparation of references and parallel texts ............................. 3
4. Case Analysis ............................... 6
4.1 Introducing Nida’s functional equivalence ........................... 6
4.2 Lexical-level difficulties and countermeasures ................................ 7
5. Conclusion ............................. 19
4. Case Analysis
4.1 Introducing Nida’s functional equivalence
According to Nida (1964), the “equivalence” in functional equivalence theory includes the following four aspects: lexical equivalence, syntactic equivalence, textual equivalence, and stylistic equivalence. When translating, the translator should reproduce the connotation of the SL culture in the translation according to the above four aspects. In order for the translation to fully reproduce the SL culture, the translator needs to follow the following three steps: First, try to make the translation conform to the original semantics and reflect the original cultural characteristics. Maybe it is difficult to perfectly display the cultural connotation of the source text, but the translator should try his best to reproduce the SL culture. Second, in the case that the meaning and culture of the source text cannot be taken into consideration at the same time, the translator can choose to abandon the formal equivalence for maximizing the reproduction of the SL culture. Third, if the change of the original form is still unable to reproduce the semantics and culture of the source text, recreation can be considered to resolve cultural differences. Recreation refers to the transformation of the deep structure of the source language into the surface structure of the target language, that is, the cultural elements of the source language is explained by the vocabulary of the target language, making the translation more acceptable to the TL readers.
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5. Conclusion
reference(omitted)